Sunday, February 10, 2013

On another post Anonymous wrote:

 New topic please:
The Secret to Fixing Bad Schools
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/opinion/sunday/the-secret-to-fixing-bad-schools.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

If you dont have time right now for the entire article,soon to be a book, one paragraph stands out:

:What makes Union City remarkable is,,paradoxically, the abscence of pizazz. It hasnt followed the herd by closing "underperforming"schools
or giving the boot to hordes of teachers. No Teach for America recruits toil in its classrooms, and there are no charter schools."

Well, that makes smart people go hmmmm!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In quotes are from the article:

"School officials flock to Union City and other districts that have beaten the odds, eager for a quick fix. But they’re on a fool’s errand."

Nor should they run to Seattle to find a 2.4 million dollar consultant to help them "envision" as PPS did!

(In Union City)
"These places — and there are a host of them, largely unsung — didn’t become exemplars by behaving like magpies, taking shiny bits and pieces and gluing them together. Instead, each devised a long-term strategy reaching from preschool to high school."

Notice the word "each". It is NOT a one-size-fits-all solution from outside the school community!

"Each keeps learning from experience and tinkering with its model."

"Nationwide, there’s no reason school districts — big or small; predominantly white, Latino or black — cannot construct a system that, like the schools of Union City, bends the arc of children’s lives."

Read the article, and they find a way to let PPS Central Office know that Pittsburgh's communities (Homewood and the Hill) can also be successful WHEN given the autonomy to create its own solutions!

YES, WE CAN also, "bend the arc of children's lives."